In thirty minutes Lily will arrive to do my night support and as soon as she gets here we’re going to head straight out for a swim. But by the time she gets here I want to be out of the melancholy mood I’m in at the moment.…

I’m quite surprised to find myself at the last day of 2017. There are a million clichés about time passing quickly, and I’m loath to mention any of them, but this year really does feel as if it’s gone by extra-fast.…

This is hard. Really fucking hard.

It’s 4.18am and I’m awake again.

I’m sore and tired and lonely. I feel sick and fed up.

For months and months, pain and nausea have been eroding my sleep, which was already fairly bad thanks to my tics.…

I remember the first time I ever used Twitter – it’s etched in my memory. It was almost eight years ago on a sunny weekend in July. I didn’t use it to share information – I used it to find some.…

When Teresa May called a snap general election just seven weeks ago I felt a flash of hope, followed by an overwhelming feeling of apprehension.

I desperately want to be part of a society that’s more socially just, where there aren’t massive discrepancies in life expectancy depending on where you live, and where millions of people aren’t forced to use food banks to survive.…

I’m incredibly fortunate to own my home. I know that for many people the current crisis in housing makes this impossible, and is likely to do so for future generations. I watch people I care about being held hostage to increasing rents, being made homeless at a moment’s notice, and being priced out of their communities.…

Warning: I’ve never provided a warning for this blog before, but today’s post contains explicit language and a description of an experience that some people might find distressing.

The bus pulled up. I saw a buggy in the wheelchair space so I braced myself for a battle, but none came.…

Just over three years ago I wrote a post I should never have had to write. I knew as I typed each searingly sad word about the death of my fourteen-year-old friend Amy that it wasn’t right. Two days ago a jury agreed.…

I wrote yesterday about having had a bad day and feeling sad. It was a spectacularly miserable day, but some of what I was feeling wasn’t completely new. For example, over the last few weeks or even months there have been lots of times when I’ve felt lonely.…

On my way home tonight I noticed something I hadn’t paid much attention to before: lamp-posts.

Obviously that doesn’t mean the lamp-post, the one I can see from my bedroom window, because I pay that one a lot of attention.

But a bit further down the road there’s a gaggle of four lamp-posts.…